Russia marks 60th anniversary of Stalin’s death

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Russian Communists carried pictures of Josef Stalin as they laid flowers at his tomb on the 60th anniversary of his death.

By Max Seddon
Associated Press
March 06, 2013

MOSCOW — Devotees of ­Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, whose brutal purges killed millions of innocent citizens and made his name a byword for totalitarian terror, flocked to the Kremlin to praise him for making his country a world power Tuesday, while experts and politicians puzzled and despaired over his enduring popularity.

Communist Party chief ­Gennady Zyuganov led some 1,000 zealots who laid carnations at Stalin’s grave by the Kremlin wall in Moscow, praising him as a symbol of the nation’s ‘‘great victories’’ and saying that Russia needs to rely on this ‘‘unique experience’’ to overcome its problems.

Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death on March 5, 1953. Communists and other hard-liners credit him with leading the country to victory in World War II and turning it into a nuclear superpower, while critics condemn his ­repressions. Historians estimate that more than 800,000 people were executed during the purges that peaked during the Great Terror in the late 1930s, and millions more died of harsh labor and cruel treatment in the giant Gulag prison camp system, mass starvation in Ukraine and southern Russia, and deportations of ethnic minorities.

‘‘Those repressions touched every city, town, and village,’’ Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the presidential human rights council, said on Tuesday. ‘‘We can never forget this.’’

The liberal Moskovskie ­Novosti’s cover Tuesday read ‘‘Stalin. Farewell’’ with the dictator’s face scribbled over with childish graffiti, while staunch Communist daily Sovetskaya Rossiya ran a cover story on ­Stalin headlined ‘‘His time will come.’’

An opinion survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment found Stalin has remained widely admired in Russia and other former Soviet nations despite his repressions. Its authors noted that public attitudes to the dictator have improved during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 13-year rule, as the Kremlin has found Stalin’s image useful in its ­efforts to tighten control.

Roman Fomin, who organized a group laying carnations at the grave, said a leader like Stalin ‘‘would definitely be for the good of the country and the country would be developing much better than it is now.’’

Putin, whose professed ideology draws heavily from Soviet statism, has made efforts to give Stalin a more positive historical evaluation. School history textbooks have been released stressing Stalin’s role as an ­‘‘effective manager’’ of the 1930s Soviet industrialization campaign, though historians express far greater skepticism about his supposed economic achievements.

Liberal newspaper Vedomosti dismissed ‘‘the crazy dichotomy of achievements and losses’’ in an editorial Tuesday. ‘‘You can’t put economic achievements and human losses side by side, but even if you try, you won’t find any justification for the Stalin myth,’’ it said.

Pro-Kremlin lawmakers campaigned this year to rename the city of Volgograd to Stalingrad — its name from 1925 to 1961 — in commemoration of the battle against Nazi Germany there, widely considered both World War II’s bloodiest and its turning point. Most Russians, however, oppose the move and see Stalin’s death primarily as the end of an era of political repression, according to a poll by the independent Levada Center published Monday.

Opposition politicians have criticized the government for failing to clearly condemn Stalin’s repressions. Grigory Yavlinsky, a liberal former presidential candidate, demanded Tuesday that the government ‘‘recognize what happened as a crime’’ and compensate Gulag prisoners who built some of Russia’s biggest industrial ­enterprises, including metals ­giant Norilsk Nickel.

Much of the resurgence in Stalin’s popularity owes itself to nostalgic perceptions of him as a strong leader in line with Russian traditions, rather than a longing to reinstate Communist dictatorship.

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